was protective. If he thought, even for a moment, that she might be in danger, she may as well kiss her normal lifestyle goodbye until the issue was resolved.
She also wasn’t stupid. Her boss had been murdered. Most probably for a laptop, or information on it, that the bad guys might think she now had, herself. Which meant that she could very well be the next target.
And when she put it like that, going back to her apartment didn’t seem like such a good idea after all. So, instead of commenting on Jack’s decision, she closed her eyes again and laid back on the head rest of Jack’s seat for the second time that very long day.
Behind her, Dylan Anderson continued to stare out the window at nothing.
Annabelle adjusted the headphones on her ears and slugged the tread mill’s green “up” arrow a few times. The tread kicked into a higher gear and she picked up the pace. Already, she could feel the pain setting in. She turned up the music on the iPod. AC/DC screamed in her ear drums. She closed her eyes, just for a moment, letting the guitar riffs sink into her skull, and the words, into her soul.
When she re-opened them it was to find Jack in the doorway, leaning against the door jam, his arms crossed over his chest. His expression was inscrutable, but his eyes burned with blue fire.
She swallowed, punched the “up” arrow again, and ran faster. Harder. Jack watched her for a moment more and then straightened. He took the hint. With one last long, glance, he turned and walked down the hall, leaving her alone.
She was grateful. She didn’t want company right now. She wanted her music and her pain. She’d been running for just over twenty minutes and the twinge of ache in her hips was transforming into a constant throb. An ebbing and receding of inflamed agony that drove her on.
A long time ago, she would have stayed off of the tread mill and away from any kind of cardiovascular exercise, in general, because of the snapping hip syndrome and early on-set arthritis that had invaded her hip and knee joints. She’d been very active in her youth – years of dance, gymnastics, 5K races – and the activity had taken its toll on her body. But, over time, she’d learned to live with the pain. After everything she and her doctors had tried – inactivity, physical therapy, MSM, glucosamine and chondroitin tablets, a switch in diets, and anti- inflammatories – failed to solve the problem, she’d decided that it was simply her “cross to bear”, so to speak. And her doctor had finally prescribed Vicodin.
She’d grown fond of the drug since then. Acetaminophen was an effective pain killer, but it was short-lived and notoriously hard on the liver. Anti-inflammatories caused peptic ulcers. Homeopathic remedies sounded nice and green, which she was normally all for, but the truth was, life was too short and too demanding for her to sacrifice the time and patience needed to make them work. And even when they did begin to work, they had nothing on opiates.
Nothing on Vicodin.
Annabelle had a saying. She’d made it up herself once, just as the medicine was kicking in and she was gently being lifted down from a particularly high mountain of agony after running a 5K race in St.Paul and winning second place.
Her own apartment in Burnsville, which Annabelle knew she wouldn’t see for several days, if not longer, was a two-bedroom apartment with an underground communal garage. One of her bedrooms held her bed, her dresser, a trunk filled with blankets and a Smith and Wesson .357 magnum , and a closet full of clothes and shoes. The other bedroom was dedicated to what she now simply termed, “her pain.”
It was a work-out room that contained a tread mill, an upright stationary bicycle and a rack of weights. Against one wall stood a rolled-up yoga mat. Above the mat hung a Tai-Chi sword and two fans. She took a class two nights a week at the University to learn to use the sword and fans. She’d gotten pretty good. The routines took up a lot of space, so for practice, she used the communal garage on her days off or late at night, when she was certain no cars would be coming and going.
And when her joints began to inflame and the pain threatened to end her work-out, she would turn up the music on her MP3 player and will her mind away from her body. It was one of the reasons she’d eventually converted one of her rooms to an at-home gym. She so badly needed to be alone in order to concentrate enough to force her thoughts away from her body, she’d decided that the only way to realistically go about it was to work out at home from now on.
And, of course, after each work out, she would limp to her bathroom, take a hot shower, drink half a gallon of water, and take a Vicodin. It was the only way she could continue to get the exercise her body and mind craved. She figured it was either hip pain or heart pain and one was definitely worse than the other, in her book. She chose to ignore the consequences to her liver, altogether. Some times it was just better not to know.
Now, as she used Jack’s tread mill and a borrowed iPod, she changed her routine for the first time in years. Instead of willing herself away from her pain, she concentrated on it. She allowed it to consume her. A part of her wanted her body to hurt as much as her mind. So, she ran as fast as she could, as hard as she could, for as long as she could and let classic rock blare into her ear drums.
She ran at level seven out of ten for an hour and twenty minutes before the pain in her legs overshadowed the ache in her heart. She slowed the tread mill and switched play lists on the iPod. Bob Dylan told her about a woman who would give her shelter from a storm. She listened for a while, walking for another half-mile and then she shut everything down.
When she wiped her face with one of the white towels folded against the wall, she realized it wasn’t only sweat she was wiping away form her cheeks. She’d been crying and hadn’t even realized it. How many tears had she shed?
Once she was off of the treadmill, the pain really took hold. By the time she’d made it half way down the hall, her legs were seizing up on her and she was barely able to stumble to the second spare bedroom of Jack’s apartment before they gave out on her completely. She hit the bed hard and closed her eyes.
“Fuck, damn, shit.” She ran her hands over her face and rolled over, opening her eyes again. Her riding jacket and backpack were against the wall by the door. She kept the back pack at Max’s office and rarely used it. But it held a bottle of Vicodin, among other things, and she was desperately glad that Jack had thought to grab it before he’d driven her away that afternoon.
She took a slow, shaky breath and steeled herself against the pain as she stood once more and limped to the wall. She unzipped the bag and pulled out the prescription bottle. It was still two-thirds full, as she rarely used pills from this container. It was her emergency stash.
This qualified as an emergency.
She popped the top off and shook a ten milligram pill into her mouth. Normally, she would bite them in half. But not today.
Once the pill was on her tongue, she scanned the room for her bottle of water. She found it on the floor by the bed, opened it, and drank down the remainder of the bottle. And then she laid back down on the bed and waited.
The throb in her legs had spread to her lower back and ebbed ever so slowly upward, a growing flow of agony like a tide of the damned, flooding her system. She was lost in it. It was so encompassing that she didn’t notice when she slid beneath it and slipped into the welcome, protective darkness of sleep.
In her mind, she was walking down a long hallway. Her stomach rumbled. She was hungry. Why? It was lunch time. She looked over her shoulder. Cassie waited at the other end, behind her, a million miles away, in the light at the end of a strange tunnel-like blackness. Cassie smiled.
“Go on,” she said, and her voice echoed against the walls. “Tell him we’re leaving. I’ll bet he’ll want some pie. He likes those white berries in it.”
Annabelle nodded, smiling. “I’ll ask,” she said. “But they charge too much for it. Costs an arm and a leg. She turned away from Cassie. Max’s door stood before her, the golden knob huge and gleaming in some unseen light source. She placed her hand on the knob, and it didn’t fit all the way around. She brought up her other hand, grasping the handle from both sides and turning it clockwise.
With great effort, she turned it enough that it finally clicked. She pulled the door open, and looked into the room. It was engulfed in flames. Her eyes widened as the flames rushed toward the door, threatening to take her with them. She tried to move back, but her fingers were stuck to the door knob. It grew hot beneath her touch. Her
